47°
Randy Brown usually gets out of bed before 4 a.m., though his job in an insurance office doesn't start until after 8. He wakes without an alarm, gets dressed and goes to one of seven New Canaan gardens under his care. He waters and tends to oriental lilies and Sweet William flowers until he has to leave for work. When his office job ends around 5 p.m., he goes back to the gardens.
"When I'm in the field playing I call it playing time just disappears," says Randy, who runs a business called Uncle Buck's Secret Gardens with his wife, Christine. Uncle Buck's has been a fixture at the New Canaan farmers' market for more than seven years, offering bouquets of hand-cut flowers they grow in unused spaces around town. Randy and Christine have partnerships with land owners that allow the Browns to plant, care for and sell what they grow on the land in exchange for some of the crops.
"They have the means, we've got the knowledge," Randy says. "My garden owners have the best-decorated houses in town."
On Saturday afternoons, Randy and Christine set up a booth at the farmers' market underneath a sign hand-painted by his sister-in-law. They have expanded their gardens to grow tomatoes, pumpkins and winter squash in addition to the flowers they currently sell. The oriental lilies are their favorite, though, and they plant more than 10,000 bulbs throughout the year. "They lend themselves to being beautiful," says Christine, who works for the New Canaan school district.
Randy says they don't plan to quit their day jobs anytime soon, but they're happy doing this on the side. "It keeps us sane," he says. "We bring them here, we meet a lot of people, we make a lot of friends. We try to make the ends meet, and if we're lucky enough to have enough dough, we do it the next year."
Click here to follow Daily Voice New Canaan and receive free news updates.
